And, statistically, the Bloods gang members connected to the woman’s drive-by slaying shouldn’t have been caught and sent to prison.

Her March 18, 2007, murder on the fringes of the 90011 ZIP code was one of hundreds of homicides in an area of South Los Angeles that stretches south from Washington Boulevard to Slauson Avenue and east from South Main Street to Long Beach Boulevard. And although the circumstances of her death are similar to other cases, a federal indictment of one of her killers opened a window on the drug rivalries that dominate life in a housing project near where she was killed.

“It’s a war zone here that hasn’t been declared a war zone,” said Adela Barajas, Sanchez’s sister-in-law and a community activist seeking to improve her neighborhood, officially renamed South Los Angeles that she still refers to as South Central Los Angeles.

Policed largely by officers assigned to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Newton Division, officials have sought to rebrand the area following the 1992 Rodney King riots. South Central is no longer the preferred designation, but the name change has done little to quell the decades-long turf rivalries over drug distribution networks that have taken dozens of lives.

Shootin’ Newton

An 18-month investigation by the Los Angeles News Group found that nearly half of all homicides that occurred between Jan. 1, 2000, and Dec. 31, 2010 across Los Angeles County remain unsolved. The investigation also found that detectives from the Newton Division — known to some as “Shootin’ Newton” — have a higher success rate than their counterparts in 77th and Southwest divisions, which are also located in South Los Angeles.

At Jefferson High School, the largest public high school in the area, just 58 percent of students graduated after four years in 2014, less than the average for Los Angeles Unified School District schools, according to district records.

About 40 percent of residents live below the poverty line, more than double the rate across L.A. County, according to U.S. Census data. About half of the people residing in 90011 were born outside of the U.S.

Laura

Sanchez, 34, a mother of four, was shot to death as she returned home from a rehearsal for her daughter Denise’s quinceanera. The shooters were aiming at Sanchez’s 17-year-old son, Joey, court documents show. When Sanchez told her son to duck, she was hit instead. The fatal bullet struck Sanchez in the back then pierced her left lung and heart. Two minutes later, she was dead. Eight years later her family still struggles with the loss.

“It’s devastating. It’s a life-changing event,” said her sister-in-law Barajas. “She was the glue of our family events.”

Laura Sanchez’s death in the 4500 block of South Long Beach Avenue was the result of a gang feud, court documents show.

According to court documents, the Pueblo Bishop Bloods, who claim a neighborhood five blocks south, were in a dispute with Athens Park Surenos that resulted in the wounding of a Pueblo teen. Later that night, seeking revenge, Pueblo gang members headed north after they couldn’t find anyone from the Athens Park gang. Eventually they found Joey Sanchez riding in his mom’s van. Joey was not affiliated with a gang, the records said.

Laura Sanchez told her son she thought they were being followed. She had been paranoid about neighborhood violence as her children grew older because her mother had been murdered in a drive-by shooting nine years before, Barajas said. Riding in a three-car caravan, the group of Pueblo members stopped on Long Beach Avenue in front of Sanchez’s home. One of the cars pulled up beside Sanchez’s Astrovan. Shots were fired, and a mother protecting her son was dead.

“There’s a lot of fear. A lot of questioning,” Barajas said. “You’re sort of lost, you’re trying to make sense like, Why would they shoot a mother? Why would they shoot her?”

Jerem

While most detectives say gang-related deaths are among the hardest to solve, only one of LAPD’s homicide bureaus, Hollenbeck Division, provided data on gang-related deaths. Of the 326 homicide cases investigated by the bureau east of downtown L.A., half of the solved cases were gang-related and 70 percent of the unsolved cases were gang related.

Jerem Angeles’ killing in Long Beach on the same day Sanchez died is one of those, and eight years later, his killer is still at large.

Jessie Angeles does not know who killed his son, a 24-year-old of Filipino descent, but he believes gangs were involved.

“I’m just hoping one day I will get a call from Long Beach police and hopefully get some closure,” Jessie Angeles said.

Police said Jerem Angeles was shot in the back around 2:45 a.m. in the 2000 block of Lemon Avenue, a residential street. When police arrived on the scene, Jerem Angeles’ friends had taken him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said.

“Detectives initially investigating this case exhausted all leads, had no suspect information, and no additional or new information on the case has been received,” Long Beach police spokeswoman Nancy Pratt said in an email.

Jessie Angeles said he doesn’t know much about his son’s death.

He said his son’s fiancee was with his son when Jerem was shot. Jerem was killed on the night of the couple’s engagement party, but his fiancee did not cooperate with police during the investigation.

He said his son was a hard worker, but was involved with gangs despite promises to turn his life around.

“He gave me false hope,” Jessie Angeles said.

Justice

It took three trials for Sanchez’s family to get some answers.

Jailhouse recordings, video surveillance and confidential informants led to first-degree murder charges for four Pueblo Bishop Bloods gang members five months after Sanchez was killed.

Barajas said they were surprised to learn it was African-American gang members who killed Sanchez.

“We lived here all our lives and never had any kind of problems with anyone who lives in the projects or any gang members or anything like that so it was really shocking to find out it was them,” Barajas said. “There was disbelief. We thought, ‘Are you sure?’

“There’s this myth of law enforcement making an arrest to say, ‘OK, we solved this case’.”

LAPD detectives matched the vehicles from video surveillance taken at the murder scene to vehicles in the Pueblo del Rio Housing Project belonging to admitted gang members, court documents show. Joey Sanchez and other witnesses also identified the vehicles as those used in the shooting.

One Pueblo gang member, who later denied he was interviewed by detectives, said several gang members left a gun at his home and said they had just killed a woman while they were trying to shoot a 38th Street gang member, according to court documents.

Eventually juries convicted Jerry “KO” Sorrels, Daymon “D-Dog” Garrett, Roderick A. Jenkins, Jamal “PJ” Payne for killing Laura Sanchez. They are all serving a minimum of 25 years in state prison.

In 2010 a federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act indictment for murder, robbery and drug trafficking charged a fifth man, Marquis “Baby Uzi” Edwards, with Sanchez’s murder. Edwards, also a Pueblo gang member, pleaded guilty and is serving 40 years in prison in a high-security federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania.

U.S. District Court Judge S. James Otero sentenced Edwards to 10 years more than the sentence prosecutors recommended “to protect the community.”

Otero said Edwards participated in the murder “to both maintain and enhance his membership in the gang,” according to court transcripts.

Culture of pride

Newton homicide detectives say they have an advantage over other homicide bureaus in South L.A. because the bureau has a history of detectives staying in the division for most of their careers, said Newton’s incoming detective supervisor Richard Arciniega. Divisions like 77th, Southeast and Southwest, which had a lower solve rate for homicides than Newton between 2000 and 2010, tend to have young detectives and a high turnover rate, he said.

Another advantage is that the homicide unit is at the division station, Arciniega added. Southwest and Southeast homicide units are housed at the 77th Division station.

Arciniega said he’s been a police officer for 32 years and a detective for 17 years and he’s spent nearly all of his career in Newton. He emulates previous supervisors who’ve spent their careers in Newton.

“I was offered spots elsewhere, but this is my home,” he said.

Newton Division Capt. Jorge Rodriguez said the detectives take pride in their work and want to make the community better. He said the Newton Division that covers 9 square miles and about 150,000 residents is the poorest of the LAPD divisions in South L.A.

“It’s the opportunity to make the community better,” Rodriguez said. “It’s that gratification, that high you chase, when you can say the community is safer.”

Arciniega said the key to solving gang-related homicides is the relationships officers establish with gang members.

He testified at a death row sentencing hearing for a gang member and said he and the convicted killer grew up together.

“He was a young gangster and I was a young gang cop,” Arciniega said he testified.

And the man facing death row acknowledged that.

Arciniega said he’s missed countless dinners or family events because he got a call that patrol officers brought in someone who had some information on a homicide case he was working.

If he waited until the next morning, the opportunity would be gone, he said.

Aftermath

Survivor Joey Sanchez believes his mother should be alive and he should be dead.

“Joey has a lot of guilt. He used to say, ‘Why not me? Why my mother?’” Barajas said.

He graduated high school the spring his mother died. He attended college for a year and a half but dropped out because he couldn’t concentrate. He struggles with substance abuse that worsens around the anniversary of his mom’s death.

Sanchez’s youngest son Brian, who was 5 years old when his mother died, will text his aunt in the middle of the night asking to go to the cemetery the next morning.

Barajas said Brian Sanchez finds relief from the grief through running, which he picked up after a race for survivors of violence.

The week Laura Sanchez died, the children wanted to do something to honor their mother. They rallied through the neighborhood, but wanted to continue to do more. Barajas reached out to then District 9 City Councilwoman Jan Perry who helped her bring in resources to revamp Fred Roberts Recreation Center, a neglected park near where Laura Sanchez was killed, with a new building, play equipment, basketball courts and programming.

Barajas founded LAURA (Life After Uncivilized Ruthless Acts), a nonprofit foundation for homicide victims that also focuses on civic engagement and activities for youth. She takes about 20 youngsters camping each year and offers peer-to-peer counseling.

“She’s giving young people a role model in herself and I think a road map for how to become a community activist,” Perry said. “Out of something really horrible came something positive.”

Sarah Favot is an award-winning Los Angeles-based freelance writer. Most recently she was a data and investigative reporter at L.A. School Report, a non-profit education news website. Prior to that she was a staff writer for the L.A. Daily News covering county government. She is Vice President of the Los Angeles Chapter of The Society of Professional Journalists.